The Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Service is hoping to expand its scope after achieving £56million of bottom line benefits for businesses.

Scottish Enterprise said it has spent £8m during the five years of the scheme giving it an impressive return on the investment.

Smas has just undertaken its 500th business improvement project and alongside that the service has dealt with 3,600 enquiries from manufacturers of all sizes.

It now hopes SMAS will be able to target more manufacturing sectors if budget proposals can be agreed.

Scottish Enterprise chairman Crawford Gillies yesterday visited East Kilbride life sciences firm Controlled Therapeutics which will be the focus of the 500th SMAS project.

He said: "With latest figures showing that UK manufacturing slowed in September following five months of expansion, now is the time for manufacturers to seek more efficiencies and productivity from their operations. As these figures demonstrate, SMAS has been one of our biggest success stories in the last five years delivering real improvements to the companies' bottom line.

"Although we've already delivered 500 projects, we want to work with even more manufacturers across Scotland.

"We're also beginning to see a number of companies come back to SMAS for second and even third projects to address different areas of their business. This is helping us to build long-termrelationships and ensure we understand more about their business and howwecan help them."

The number of diagnostic reviews the service completes is expected to be between 400 and 500 this year compared to 260 in 2009/10.

Smas now has 30 advisers with project work costing around £600 per day which Scottish Enterprise believes is around half of what private contractors would charge.

While SMAS has made good inroads in food and drink and engineering it hopes to achieve Continued on Page 3

Continued from Page 1 better penetration in other sectors. AScottish Enterprise spokeswoman said: "Chemicals and life sciences companies remain underrepresented in the overall statistics. "When weworkwith companies such as Controlled Therapeutics we know we can add significant value however a lot of companies still don't know about us.

"This may be because companies, particularly in life sciences,are in start-up phase.

"However we have demonstrated when these companies do engage with us we work well with them."

Finance Secretary John Swinney said: "These figures demonstrate that the Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Service is delivering real, practical support for Scottish business, helping to achieveefficiencies and stimulating growth across the manufacturing sector."